SysTER's main page shows students the questions that remain to be answered as well as showing them whether they answered previous questions correctly. Learners click on a cell in the table to select which question they will answer next. For questions that are easily represented in a small graphic (as in the example below), students can see what the question will be. For other types of questions these icons can be representations of the type of material that the question covers.

One way that SysTER helps students to focus learning that is not typical for multiple choice tests is by having learners explain their answers. In addition to choosing an answer from a list, students are asked to explain their answer. In a demonstration of the potential power of this technique we had one group of learners use math to explain their answers, but made no attempt to constrain the other group's explanations. Even though both groups answered the same questions and received the same feedback, the learners who used math performed significantly better in a subsequent test of the material and transfer task. Another feature of SysTER uses this concept of constraining learners' explanations by offering links to a set of resources that may apply to the questions on an assessment. Pilot studies of this feature suggest that it helps learners to write better explanations which help them to learn better. Though the learners' explanations for each answer are recorded by the system to provide formative feedback to both the teacher and the learner, SysTER does no parsing of these free-form answers. This makes SysTER easier to write and SysTER assessments easier to author.

Another tool that SysTER uses to make multiple choice tests a better opportunity for learning is to present the question before letting students see the choices and requiring an answer. By offering students a chance to access resources between seeing the question and deciding that they are ready to answer it, SysTER requires students to generate an answer -- or set of possible answers -- before seeing the whole list. .

Another feature that helps students to learn is providing feedback that addresses misconceptions indicated by the answers that they chose.

Multiple choice questions are easily scored by computers, which makes it easier to write a program like SysTER. More important, however, is that it is easy to author multiple choice assessments. Techniques for having computers parse other types of answers can be programmed, but creating an interface for a typical teacher to author those interactions is much more difficult.